Pacifists can serve democracy directly by improving the machinery that gives people the means to rule themselves locally and nationally. And, at the same time, without waiting for perfection, we can and must somehow create quickly a vehicle for international democracy--a world government, in short.
The idea of a federation of nations is an old vision of many prophets. Thinkers within and without our churches continuously preach the Brotherhood of Man. But our age is unlike other ages. We cannot remain content to prophesy a future millennium. The new miracles of science and technology enable us at last to bring our world some measure of unity; if our generation does not use them for construction, they will be misused to destroy it and all its slowly-won civilization of the past in a new and terrible warfare.
A new world war would engulf us all. Traditional diplomacy could not save us. It is an outworn method of manipulating international relations that evidently creates disharmony and confusion. International law is discredited. The League of Nations (Read: United Nations) is inadequate. Something new and efficient and democratic has to be quickly evolved.
Why not a new start with the use of up-to-date science to hold the peoples of the world in close communication--the cable, telephone, radio and soon television? We don't need embassies. We can have easier contact now around the globe than the cities of classic Greece had with one another.
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has repeatedly accepted the idea of responsibility. For instance: When our predecessors, the Women's Peace Party, organized early in 1915, they besought the neutral nations to take democratic leadership in offering mediation and after war ended, to summon a conference for the building of a better world. This was even more clearly the demand of the International Congress of Women at the Hague.
The actual terms of peace were made by victorious militarists and their Covenant for the new League could only provide for a great world forum--not yet a government.
Pacifists easily saw faults in the structure of the League of Nations.... We wanted it to evolve into a real government, revising its constitution freely as time went on. On the contrary, it has become less and less open to popular pressure. Even now when the "great democracies" completely control the League, we observe no effort to democratize its structure or proceedings. Revision seems to be taboo.
In 1924, when the first and last American Congress of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was held here, an idea was taking shape in several of our sections about elaborating in detail our own pacifist plans for the ideal world order. The most complete blueprint for international reorganization of that year was worked out by Rosika Schwimmer. Another well-intentioned effort to work directly and non-nationally for more perfect world organization was embodied in the much-discussed world section of our Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
As we know, the world was rearmed and returned gradually to prewar politics, practically scrapping the League as a political instrument of unity.
A recent effort in our U.S. Section (WILPF) to revive activity for a world government was the foundation of the People's Mandate to Governments. It provided that all peoples we could reach were to be given the opportunity of demanding by their signatures that their governments abandon all preparation for war and prepare instead for peace by the prompt formation of a real Federation of Nations.
Our international executive committee (WILPF) had before it in 1936 and again in 1937 the subject of a new start at world organization. A resolution was presented at our Congress in Czechoslovakia.
The U.S. Section (WILPF) has gone ahead of the others on this line. We resolved in 1937 to study all the propositions before the public for world government, and a great deal of study has followed. A nucleus of convinced men and women has inaugurated the Campaign for World Government, with an office address at 30 West 70th St., New York, where Caroline Lexow Babcock is eastern director, William B. Lloyd, Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois is midwest director and Mrs. Annie Gray directs in Colorado. The Campaign for World Government bases its work definitely on the detailed plan of the brochure "Chaos, War, or a New World Order?" first written by Rosika Schwimmer and myself in 1924 and revised by us this year.
We shall press for government action in this country, in Canada, in the Scandinavian countries, wherever pressure can be brought.. Governments will be asked to call the World Constitutional Convention. Two members of parliament in Ottawa have promised to urge the Canadian government to call it. Congressman Hamilton Fish has introduced a request in the State Constitutional Convention in Albany to memorialize President Roosevelt to summon a "World Constitutional Convention to setup an all-inclusive, democratic, no-military Federation of Nations organized and modeled after the constitution of the United States in order to promote peace, justice and mutual understanding among nations."
A preliminary planning group before the Constitutional Convention proper to evolve guiding principles and rule might be called officially or unofficially. It should be composed of authorities in peace action and in law, world-minded unbiased experts whose weight would give popular authority to the results of their work. This requires money. But it need not involve governments. Governments may not be finally and officially involved until the people's support of the world plan compels them to take part. (Emphasis added.)
President Roosevelt is contemplating some kind of leading action toward international peace; they say he has even considered a World Constitutional Convention. Peace-minded citizens must encourage him to start the real new deal in the antiquated game of world politics. He thought a big army and navy would help him bargain in the old deal and the old game. Preparedness led Wilson off the track, too. Let the President know that we want a completely new experiment. No so-called" international police force" to wage League war. No such thing as a "league to enforce peace!" We aim at perfection. We will take the best organization we can get to begin the new world order, and humanity will never stop improving it.
Give the world the right machinery, well-designed. Keep it oiled and tended and it will work without violence. A sane World Government will be such a mutually beneficial society that no group of nationalists anywhere can long afford to keep their country out of it. A part does not willingly separate from an organic whole.